Matthew Lickona

As an undergraduate at Thomas Aquinas College near Ojai, California, Matthew Lickona co-founded and ran The Hype, a college lit-mag printed on the school's copier and sold at a dollar a copy to pay off speeding tickets acquired while trying to make movie times in Los Angeles. This may or may not have helped him to land a job at the Reader upon graduation in 1995, but the paper did reprint some of his collegiate Easter Island-based cartoons, and later, his Mudflap Girls series. He has been at the paper ever since, in a variety of capacities: feature writer, wine columnist, church reviewer, restaurant critic, television columnist, editor at large, and now, film critic. Plus some other stuff under various pseudonyms.

Articles by Matthew Lickona

“These are getting more elaborate every year,” said my fellow media person Callie as we gazed up at the full-scale model helicopter above the two-story set intended to invoke a bombed-out Middle Eastern edifice. We ...

There’s a moment near the beginning of Mission: Impossible: Fallout — when can-do American agent Ethan Hunt is receiving the recorded details of his impossible mission via reel-to-reel video embedded in a copy of Homer’s ...

You don’t need no stinkin’ badges What’s a poor unlucky muggle to do now that Comic-Con passes have become more expensive than Batmobile rims, and harder to pick up than Thor’s hammer? Not to worry, ...

Sheila Szilagyi-Noseworthy is getting the upstairs bathroom remodeled in her pretty Poway home. “It’ll be nice,” she muses. “But I always joke that we need a smaller house and a bigger garage. That’s my dream, ...

If you didn’t want to inspire comparison, maybe you shouldn’t have made a sequel

Needless to say, most people, critics and civilians alike, disagreed with my negative take on Incredibles 2. Biggest opening of all time for an animated film, 94% fresh rating at RottenTomatoes.com, A+ Cinemascore — plus ...

I loved the first Incredibles movie. I especially loved the ending. Journey back with me to 2004, and mind the fourteen-year-old spoilers along the way. The super-powered Parr family has triumphed: in stopping the killer ...

Ocean's 8, Hereditary and more "women's pictures" among this week's new movie releases

Well, director Colin Treverrow (Safety Not Guaranteed, Jurassic World, and um, The Book of Henry) went and gave a barn-burner of an interview to the good people at Uproxx that should have folks talking about ...